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When to tell boss I need STD Texas

Hello,

I work for a large corporation in Dallas and I had a surgery in March and had to take a couple months of STD to recover. I need to have another surgery in November which I haven't scheduled with my doctor yet. I have vacation scheduled in October. I'm afraid if I tell my boss about my surgery before my scheduled vacation days that I could lose those days.

My questions are:

1. Do I need to tell my boss before my vacation or would it be ok to wait and tell my boss about my surgery a week or so before I have it? They can easily have a replacement to cover for me, even with short notice.
2. Will this have any impact on my ability to get STD and then return to my job?

I'm afraid of getting fired for having two surgeries and taking STD so close together.

STD is short term disability which is the way you get paid and does nothing to protect your job. FMLA is what protects your job. Texas does not have any extra protection outside of federal FMLA for unpaid protected timeoff.

How long is "a couple of months"? FMLA only guarantees 12 weeks of job protection in a 1 year period (most employers use a rolling year, some use calendar, etc). If you took most or all of those 12 weeks within that time period, then anything over 12 weeks will not be protected. And if you haven't worked the 1250 hours in the prior 12 month period, that can also make you ineligible for the FMLA protection especially the 2nd time around. And honestly taking vacation knowing you are going to need more time-off the next month isn't a great thing to do if you don't have any FMLA protected time left.

For "scheduled medical procedures" 30 days notice should generally be given under FMLA : https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs28e.pdf (I HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU READ THAT LINK) Failure to do so means the employer could delay your FMLA protected time for 30 days.... which could mean unprotected time in the middle where they could (not saying they would) terminate you.

Honestly, it's better not to play games with your employment and your health. It's always possible that if like you say it is not hard for them to find a short term replacement that they would agree to both.

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